1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer program product, system, and method for applying replication rules to determine whether to replicate objects.
2. Description of the Related Art
Data replication is used to replicate data belonging to multiple nodes from one server to another server, so that if the main source server to which data is being backed-up goes down, the clients can recover their data from the replication site. A storage-management server such as Tivoli® Storage Manager (TSM) stores data objects in one or more storage pools and uses a database for tracking metadata about the stored objects. (Tivoli is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation worldwide). The storage management server may replicate the data objects to a remote location for disaster recovery purposes. Some of the methods used to transfer data to a remote location include physically transporting tapes containing copies of the data from the source site to the disaster recovery site, electronically transmitting the data (TSM export/import) or using hardware replication of the source site disk storage to create a mirror of the data. Available replication hardware devices include Virtual Tape Library (VTL) products that perform block-level replication using deduplication hardware.
There is a need in the art for improved techniques for replicating objects from one server to another.